phrenology

• The Review invents a new word for me—I am an “anti-body”; but the Outlook is the richest: I am the one man who believes in Spiritualism, phrenology, anti-vaccination, and the centrality of the earth in the universe, whose life is worth writing. —  Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2
• It's called phrenology, and it allows you to determine a man's—I mean a person's—nature merely from studying the bumps on their head. —  FSFMagazine,May2007
• In an age when phrenology was a mania, its masters found in his cranium the organs of what they called imagination and causality, of individuality, comparison, and locality--by which jargon they meant to say that he had a strong power of imaging and of inductive reasoning, a knowledge of men, of places, and of things The life of the young officer had thus far been so commonplace as to awaken little expectation for his future. —  The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte Vol. I. (of IV.)
• Whoever disseminates true phrenology is a public benefactor Joseph Cook declared: "Choosing a foreman or clerk, guiding the education of children, settling my judgment of men in public or private life, estimating a wife or husband, and their fitness for each other, or endeavoring to understand myself and to select the right occupation, there is no advice of which I so often feel the need as that of a thoroughly able, scientific, experienced and Christian phrenologist Oliver Wendell Holmes changed his views on phrenology in his maturer years and said: "We owe phrenology a great debt. —  To Infidelity and Back
• When his life as a student came to an end, he returned home with his whole faculties of curiosity and enthusiasm concentrated upon natural history, phrenology, and animal magnetism. —  Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) Essay 7: W.R. Greg: A Sketch

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